Optical beam riding guidance for missiles which are guided from launching to the target along a line of sight of a sighting device, wherein the launching device comprises at least one light source whose sharply focused light beam is deflected with reference to the line of sight so that the light beam impinges on a receiver at the missile and a location assignment and tracking of the missile on a line of sight is performed in an evaluating circuit, wherein either the reference of the location assignment to the expiring time is produced by means of a time base which follows in the evaluating circuit and is synchronized with the launching device until the moment of launching, or a time base can be triggered by means of using a second pulse-modulated reference light source arranged parallel to the line of sight.
Optical guide beam systems, in which modulated light waves are used for guiding a missile, are known from various publications.
DE-AS 16 23 391 describes a system for the optical beam riding guidance of vehicles, in which a guide beam runs over a fixed angle of space in a periodically alternating direction. In addition, a reference signal transmitter is provided which marks a determined position of the guide beam at determined points in time. In order to produce the modulated and deflected guide beams in the launching installation and for the reception and evaluation in the missile this system requires considerable expenditure in terms of circuit technology if a great accuracy of the tracking is to be achieved. Moreover, an evaluation of the roll attitude of the missile is not possible.
A device for guiding a missile by means of a light beam which is deflected in a spiraling manner is known from DE-OS 26 58 689. This guiding device enables the detection of the roll attitude of the missile, however it requires a synchronization of the time clock in the missile with the time clock of the deflecting device in the launching installation. In addition, a high-precision timing pulse generator synchronized before the launch is required in the evaluating circuit of the missile, which timing pulse generator could previously only be used in missiles with relatively low starting accelerations, since the high initial accelerations of approximately 50,000 g occurring, for example, in shells lead to a compulsory outage of the time clock.